Neem Karoli Baba

Not every lineage in yoga is about the body, and this one is about the heart. Neem Karoli Baba, "Maharaj-ji" to those who loved him, taught no postures and left no system; he wrapped himself in a plaid blanket, fed people, and told them to love and serve. Yet through a handful of Americans who found him in the 1960s, his influence on Western spiritual life has been immense. Ram Dass's Be Here Now, Krishna Das's kirtan, the Seva Foundation's eye-care work, and, decades later, pilgrimages by Silicon Valley founders all trace back to a small ashram in the Kumaon hills.¹²

The miracle baba

He was born, by most accounts around 1900, as Lakshman Narayan Sharma in Akbarpur, Uttar Pradesh, to a Brahmin landowning family; he married and had children before renouncing to wander as a sadhu.³ His lasting name came from a village, Neeb Karori, where, as the story runs, railway officials put him off a train, and the train would not move until they invited him back aboard, whereupon he set conditions for the village's benefit.² Across north India he became known as the "miracle baba"; his devotion centered on Hanuman, the monkey-god of selfless service, and his teaching compressed to four instructions: "Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God, and tell the truth."²

From about 1962 he developed the ashram at Kainchi, in the hills near Nainital, its Hanuman temple consecrated on a June day still kept as the annual feast; the ashram's foundation is dated 1964.⁴ He kept other ashrams too, at Vrindavan, Rishikesh and elsewhere, and died at Vrindavan on 11 September 1973.⁵

The American disciples

Maharaj-ji never came to the West, but the West came to him. In 1967 the Harvard psychologist Richard Alpert, recently fired alongside Timothy Leary, found him in India and was renamed Ram Dass, "servant of God"; his 1971 book Be Here Now became a counterculture scripture and carried Maharaj-ji's name to millions.¹ The musician Jeffrey Kagel became the devotee and chant-leader Krishna Das, later the best-selling Western kirtan artist.⁶ The physician Larry Brilliant, sent by Maharaj-ji into the WHO's smallpox campaign, helped eradicate the disease and co-founded the Seva Foundation.⁷ Later still, both Steve Jobs (who traveled to Kainchi in 1974, months after the guru's death) and Mark Zuckerberg made the pilgrimage. It was Jobs who advised Zuckerberg to go.⁸⁹

Practice in this lineage

This is a bhakti lineage, a devotional one, and its practice is love and service rather than asana or technique.² Its signature is kirtan, the call-and-response chanting of the divine names, above all the Hanuman Chalisa, popularized worldwide by Krishna Das. Alongside it stands seva, selfless service, from feeding people at the ashram bhandaras to the global eye-care work of the Seva Foundation.² There is no posture sequence and no certification; a "class" in this tradition is more likely a kirtan than a yoga class, and its teaching lives in the four instructions and in Ram Dass's Be Here Now.

The lineage today

Kainchi Dham remains a major pilgrimage site; its June feast day drew, by official count, more than 100,000 people in 2026.⁴ In the United States, the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram and Hanuman Temple in Taos, New Mexico, grown from a marble Hanuman statue shipped from India in 1978, is the center of American devotion, with daily aarti, public meals and a 2026 feast in late September.⁵ The Love Serve Remember Foundation preserves Ram Dass and Maharaj-ji's teachings, and Krishna Das's kirtan fills concert halls.¹⁰ A listing that names Neem Karoli Baba as its lineage is offering devotion, chanting and service, a heart-path rather than a posture practice, and a good fit for anyone drawn to the kirtan side of the yoga world.

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